From Oblivion to Skyrim: Changes and Predictions

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The Elder Scrolls series returns next year – but what can you expect?

By Patrick Kolan

After five years of waiting, we now have the first scant bits of information we know for sure about The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. We know, for instance, that the game is a direct sequel to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – and there will be dragons. We also know that Bethesda has been working tirelessly for years now, creating an almost entirely retooled engine.

Beyond this, however, we're left to speculate. By looking at Elder Scrolls: Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion, we're able to trace a clear line of gameplay evolution from game to game. In this feature, we take a look at the potential changes we want to see and a few predictions too.

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An Overhauled Engine We already know that Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be running on an engine that was based in part on technology we've seen in both Oblivion and Fallout 3 – but it's not the Gamebryo engine. Comments from Executive Producer, Todd Howard, lead us to believe the bulk of the engine is completely new – but based around ideas generated through Gamebryo. We're talking, effectively, a new house built on the raw foundations of the old one.

What are we actually expecting, then? For starters, you can probably say goodbye to the chunky and generic character models of yore, along with the waxy, lifeless textures. Fallout 3 and New Vegas point towards internal refinement, but we're sure the new engine will be that much more impressive again.

From left:Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. The graphical improvements should be even more obvious in Skyrim.

The physics puzzles were much-touted before Oblivion was released, but were disappointingly scarce and rarely effectively implemented. As such, we would take a stab and say that enhanced physics and proper physics-enabled puzzles and traps will feature heavily.

Oblivion also introduced organic landscapes into the mix. By using complex algorithms, level designers could save time and effort populating the environment by hand and instead let logic dictate the kinds of foliage that should appear and where. After five years and some incredible advances in this kind of thinking, we're going to see some significant improvements to this approach in Skyrim.

Rethink Levelling In Oblivion, every enemy in the world levelled up alongside you. Basically, you could enter a dungeon at level 5 or level 19 and find enemies of equivalent or marginally stronger abilities regardless. The result is that you always have a challenge on your hands, which in theory is good, right? Well, not really. Not when it means never feeling you're accomplishing anything and your all-powerful weapons and armour feel completely worthless in the grand scheme.

We predict a return to a more natural levelling system, where there are simply enemies that are vastly more powerful than you – and will take serious strategy, magic and weapons to bring down. The better the gear, the easier you'll find early, local dungeons – and the farther afield you go, the stronger the foes. Naturally, there will be balancing issues, but it's better to feel like you're able to smite your opponent in one hit with your uber-weapon than to struggle to take down a beach-crab with your glass axe!

Variety of Environments and Races One of the hallmarks of the series, ever since Daggerfall's famously staggering landscape twice the size of Great Brittan (around 487,000 square kilometres!). Morrowind, on the other hand, was about 25 square kilometres and Oblivion topped out at 41 square kilometres. While Daggerfall's landscape was randomly generated and populated, Morrowind and Oblivion are more-or-less constructed by hand (with the exception of the foliage in Oblivion). That means, it's far more taxing on the design team and far more time-consuming to create. With that said, we're expecting Skyrim to be larger in size than Oblivion – perhaps as much as 60 square kilometres of terrain.

Will Skyrim offer the kind of environmental variety that Oblivion ultimately lacked?

We know that Skyrim is a mountainous and snowy environment, largely uninhabited but with pockets of civilization. As such, we're hoping Bethesda get clever and give us more variety than was present in Oblivion's Cyrodiill – and more verticality too. Both Morrowind and Oblivion had elements of mountainous terrain – but Morrowind managed to work in more variety overall. There were notable differences to the way that game clearly divided cultures and ruling houses – stylistically and geographically. We'd love to see a return to this kind of cultural variety in Skyrim.

Then there are the dungeons! We need variety here too; most felt far too similar, due to a lack of textural variety and cookiecutter layouts. Hopefully Skyrim will be full of organic cave networks, mysterious catacombs and loads of ornately designed dungeons, crypts, castles and secret hideouts that feel far more unique this time around.

Retooled Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence – or lack thereof, can be a real killer for gamers looking for realism and total immersion. In Oblivion, it was all too easy to exploit AI-driven characters in shops and enemies in the environment to your advantage. You could use the poor cone of vision to get the jump on your enemy in broad daylight, for instance. Elsewhere, it was far too easy to sneak up on a character and pick-pocket them or ransack a store by similar methods. It just cheapened the experience. Logic in a situation like this is hard to pull off in a game world – but not impossible. Games like Red Dead Redemption's dynamic AI systems and responsive enemies really took the right next steps forward – and we think Skyrim should seek to take it even farther.